A Day in the Life
by lightning bird
Summary: DexLabs has it all - heroes, geniuses, demons, soldiers, tyrants, idiots, nerds, villains, and more. United by a common cause, rising to the call to defend the earth from the Fusion invasion, they all have stories. More often than not, those stories are pretty stupid.
1. Of a Powerpuff Girl

**. . . of a Powerpuff Girl**

"Why can't I wear this? It's what's in style right now!"

"Maybe it's because you had more on when you were born," volunteered Buttercup in the spirit of not helping at all.

Blossom Utonium cast her sister a smoldering look that was an inch away from cutting her down with lasers. She was modeling her new, bright pink bikini. Had she been anywhere but in the living room of their DexLabs suite, she would have caused record amounts of whiplash and traffic accidents.

"Hey, I was there. Just tellin' it like it is," Buttercup defended.

"There are plenty of other pretty style bathing suits, Blossom," Bubbles piped, trying to come to the help of both parties without exactly dipping a toe in the waters.

Buttercup suffered from no such inhibitions. "Yeah, and some of them actually use more than four square inches of fabric, Lady Godiva!"

"Buttercup, please." The Professor gestured for her to let him deal with the situation. "For the last time, Blossom, no."

"But . . . Professor!"

"I give you girls plenty of latitude and you know it. I'm not asking too much."

The front door of the suite opening caused a pause in the family debate as Dexter, their slightly older adopted brother, walked in for lunch. The only thing visible of him was his purple gloves and his safety orange hair, as his nose was buried in some report or other for one of his companies. Fresh from a meeting, he read as he walked, clearly on some sort of business tycoon autopilot as he somehow maneuvered the stairs without breaking his concentration or his neck. Completely unconscious to anything but production numbers, he wandered right into the middle of the fray. Accompanying Dexter was his best friend, Ben Tennyson, who had been relegated to pack mule. Weighed down with file folders, he lingered at the top of the stairs, dumping the files on the table in the foyer and then struggling to keep the slick paper from sliding away from him.

"Dexter," snapped Blossom, determined to get a second opinion, "do you see anything wrong with what I'm wearing?"

Poor Dexter looked up and saw more of his sister's skin than he'd ever seen at once in the past four years. Reports went flying as he let out a manly scream, seizing the Professor as a shield and yanking him over to stand between the two teens.

"I rest my case," said the Professor, folding his arms.

At Dexter's screech, Ben abandoned his pile of papers and pounded down the stairs, searching for a threat and ready to go hero. Blossom put her hands on her hips, but her annoyance was directed at Dexter and that fact that she had to make a distinction.

"It's a bikini, not a bra, Dexter."

Dexter made a squeaky noise, unconvinced, but did not emerge from his hiding spot behind Professor Utonium.

Blossom appealed to her last hope. "Ben!"

"You look great, Blossom," he immediately replied, smiling in appreciation of a pretty girl.

Warned the Professor, "Ben!"

"You look awful," he immediately amended, well aware of who the most dangerous person in the room really was.

The Professor took a few steps forward and Dexter moved with him as he appealed to his extremely beautiful and talented creation. "Blossom, I'm glad you've got the confidence and poise to wear that . . ." He struggled to find the words for the skimpy outfit. "Bathing suit, but you're still fifteen – ten if you want to get technical. I'm your father, and I am not going to allow my youngest daughter to wear that in public!"

The argument was automatic and came to her lips before his words fully registered. "But I . . . wait, _wait! What?"_

"What what?"

"Did you just say what I think you said?"

The Professor groped for the source of her reaction. Frowning, he went back over what he'd just said. "That you're ten?"

Bikinis and bras forgotten, Blossom stared at her father in jaw-dropping shock. "No! I'm the _youngest?"_

He blinked, having attached no significance to the order of their creation since the time between one Powerpuff Girl being formed when the Chemical X had exploded and the other two was negligible to say the least. Apparently he'd been dead wrong.

Delighted with Blossom's reaction, Buttercup turned to share a smirk with Bubbles and was surprised to see her blonde and blue sister was easily as shaken as Blossom, possibly more so.

"All these years I've been the youngest Powerpuff Girl and you never told me?" demanded Blossom as if the order of coming into being somehow affected the dynamics of the superhero trio.

"He didn't tell us, either," Buttercup pointed out in an undertone.

"Hey!" came Dexter's heavily accented voice from behind the Professor. He'd gone from traumatized to indignant, but he still stayed hidden. "I'm the youngest over in my useless DeeDee-centric family!"

"I'm youngest too," defended the Professor.

"I'm oldest and youngest," said Ben, smug and happy. "Only child."

"I can't believe I'm the youngest. I thought I was the oldest," said Blossom. She turned away, stricken. "I'm the leader, not the baby."

The Professor sighed. "There's less than a second between each of you. I checked the tapes in the lab after I blew it up."

"Is that where I get it from?" wondered Dexter.

Buttercup, enjoying every moment of her pushy sister's reaction to what to her was pretty unremarkable news, threw gasoline on the fire. She elbowed Bubbles, pulling faces and pointing. "And considering I'm sittin' pretty as the poster child for middle child syndrome that means . . ."

 _"What?"_ demanded Bubbles, her nerves snapping. She knew what was coming, but obviously was going to fight it every step of the way. Her voice was piercing and savage and the men all winced. " _What does it MEAN, Buttercup?"_

It was her father who replied. "For all intents and purposes, you were all born at the same time, but Buttercup is right. She is the middle girl."

"Woot! Called it!" crowed Buttercup, cutting a victory dance between her dismayed sisters.

Big blue eyes grew larger still as Bubbles faced this harsh reality. A moment later her chin quivered and her eyes filled with tears and suddenly she was bawling at the top of her supremely healthy lungs.

"Noooooo! It's not fair! I'm too cute to be so old! I wanna be the baby!" whined Bubbles.

"You're sure acting like one!" yelled Buttercup.

"And apparently I _am_ one!" raged Blossom.

"Well, duh!"

With his three girls melting down before him and his son still cowering behind him, Patrick Utonium looked heavenwards for strength, shaking his head. "And I wanted girls. What the hell was I thinking?"

Ben watched the scene with wide-eyed appreciation as the girls got louder. "Wow. Kinda makes me glad all my kids flew off to deep space."

"Quit bragging."


	2. of a Pair of World-Class Nerds

**. . . of a Pair of World-Class Nerds**

Dexter cast a steely-eyed look over his hand of mismatched cards, considering his next move - and his opponent - with care.

"I move my Derek Jeeter repro rookie card from defense to attack mode. I'm going to power him up with Pikachu, raising his batting average by one hundred, making him stronger than your Fluttershy the Queen of Hearts Disney combo creature. Derek, sic the pony. Electric slide attack."

"Activate face-down card!" exclaimed Ben. "You just triggered my 1980 _Empire Strikes Back_ trading card."

"Red border?"

"Yeee-up."

Dexter growled. "Not an AT-AT?"

"Nope. You just pissed off my Wampa, dude. His hair absorbs your attack and my pony queen is safe."

"Jerk," muttered the younger boy as the trap was waved in his face by an insufferably smug Ben10.

"Better a Wampa than Princess Leia."

"Mmm. I place two cards face down and end my turn. Uno," he added quickly, displaying his one remaining card.

Ben drew from the mix of cards in the box beside them, adding an old maid card of a cat to his hand, which was a mess of tarot, sports, game, and various movie and cartoon collectable cards. "I play my generic forest elf archer guy in attack mode. I'm going to accessorize him with a three of swords and a cat," he said, stacking the cards before him. "Archer, attack Derek Jeeter. Catapult hairball airborne whammy."

"Uh-uh," Dexter protested smugly. "You activated my St. Michael the Archangel trap. For the bargain price of two cookies, he automatically smites anything and everything with pointy ears that's attacking my side of the field." He turned over a plastic-coated prayer card and tossed it on top of Ben's stack of cards. "Kiss your elf and your cat goodbye. And your get out of jail free card won't work on anything laminated."

Ben snagged a surrendered cookie. "Hey! St. Michael only works on a Sunday!"

"Unless I have an odd number of cards in my hand."

Ben threw down a Magicarp collector's sticker. "I activate my go fish trap. Ha! It forces you to pick up another card. Go fish, kiddo."

Dexter obeyed, rooting around in the box of odd cards and playing pieces Ben had found in the lobby of DexLabs Headquarters. Having no idea who owned the jumbles mess and not wanting to delay his visit with Dexter by turning it in to DexLabs' lost and found just yet, Ben had brought it to the lab and an impromptu game of ad hoc Duel Monsters had broken out.

"Ha back! I drew the deed to Boardwalk. I can play it as soon as I draw it. That automatically ends your turn and sends you a bill. Still uno card, so read it and weep, Tennyson."

"Meh. I'm still in the lead. Just go."

Dexter drew another card and saw his opportunity. "I'm going to sacrifice my Derek Jeeter in order to summon Megatron to the field in attack mode."

"Megatron can't attack anything pink," claimed Tennyson, waving at his pony.

"Then I'll activate his special ability to destroy one of the cards in your hand." He leaned over and plucked a card from Ben's grasp and tossed it to the graveyard. "I end my turn."

Ben glared, drawing a card without looking. "Ooooh! A rare black Uno card. This forces us both to draw until we have five cards, only you lose a hundred points for each card. That puts you two hundred points in the hole."

"Oh, you just made that up!"

"We're making the whole bloody thing up, Dex!"

"That might have worked if I hadn't activated my other face-down card first."

"You did not."

"Did so."

"Not."

"So."

"Not."

"So. I was thinking it loudly. Anyway, I activate my Mirror Force trap card. It bounces your attack back at you."

"Uno cards don't attack. They're magic."

Dexter adjusted their scores on the paper at the edge of the table. "Well, I feel attacked, so it counts."

"Fine. I put this weird dragon-thing on the field in defense mode and end my turn."

Reaching into the box, Dexter drew a four-sided di from among the cards he was adding to his hand. "Score! It's red. That means I get to roll to see how many cards I draw. Two!" He rooted around the box again, pulling out a card and a game piece before tossing the di back in for future use.

"I place one card face down and then I play my Monopoly battleship token in attack mode. Come at me, Tennyson. You're in the cross-hairs."

"I'd be shaking in my sneakers if only your battleship wasn't an inch long."

"Nobody insults my battleship and gets off scot free," swore Dexter. "I'm using my Polymerization magic card to combine my battleship and Megatron into . . . into . . . hold on, there's got to be something stupid in here I can use." He dug through the shoe box. "Ah-ha!" Triumphant, he held up a tassled book marker. "I combine them into the Space Cruiser _Yamato_!"

"No fair! That thing won't die!"

"Oh, it's as fair as anything in this game! Wave motion gun, destroy his weird dragon-thing! Sayonara, sucker!" He flicked Ben's monster aside, leaving him holding the field with just a pink pony against a space battle cruiser.

"Box of cards, guide me!" breathed the Wielder of the Omnitrix. Without looking, Ben chose a card, taking his time to look at it and producing an eye roll from his opponent at the over-dramatization. His satisfaction and smugness infected Dexter, and he knew the younger teen sensed his pending doom. He looked at the bowlful of M&M's at his side. "I'm going to bet ten red M&M's and lay a card face down, plus a face-down monster in defense mode."

"Have you taken leave of your senses and everything you learned from after school cartoons? You're going up against the most indestructible ship in the history of space exploration. I'll see your M&M's and raise you four Chips Ahoy."

"This duel's not over yet, Ginger Snap. I'll see your cookies and raise you five blue M&M's."

Dexter checked the communal bowl of chocolates. "We don't have enough blue left for that. You'll have to settle for eight green and two brown M&M's. I place one card face down. Bring it, Tennyson."

"You asked for it, kiddo." He flipped a card over. "I'm sacrificing my little pony to unleash Manny Ramirez. Whenever he's summoned in defense mode, I can automatically summon another sports card athlete from my hand. I'm calling Korbinian Holzer of the Anaheim Ducks." He threw down a hockey card. "Next up, I'm using Grave Robber to steal your Polymerization card so I can combine baseball player and my hockey player into Casey Jones."

Dexter knew he'd been outgunned and outmaneuvered. "You wouldn't!"

"Already did," Ben said smugly. "I've got more episodes and bad movies on my side than you do, Ginger Snap."

"Pfft. Their combined salaries alone would wipe out my life points."

"Yeah, well, to top it off, I'm powering him up with this Morbucks Coffee rewards card. Mr. Jones, high stick!"

Dexter slumped, accepting his defeat. "You sank my battleship."

Ben pushed the wagered cookies toward his best friend. Dexter took two and pushed the rest back.

"Play again?"

"Let's duel!"


	3. of a Bored Goddess

Author's note: This chapter was inspired by some artwork my dear friend Deserthaze made of Ben, Rex, and Mr. Green. Her art was in turn inspired when I up and gave the world the Ben 10 corset and the Generator Rex corset.

 **. . . of a Bored Goddess**

Coughing and gagging, Dexter pushed himself to his hands and knees, feeling bits of rubble slide off his back as he moved. Except for the swirling white dust making his eyes water and a few bumps, he seemed unharmed. He gave his head a little shake, trying to clear his senses and wincing at the all-too-familiar sound of alarms alerting his security force that he was at it again. What could have happened? He hadn't been working with anything explosive (in the conventional sense, but it was quite possible his definition of explosive material didn't match up with the definition in the dictionary) and the debris and dust seemed far more extensive than one blown up microwave oven could explain. He had been demonstrating (okay, showing off) a prototype device that utilized microwaves to charge cell phone batteries in just under two minutes. Up to this point, the tests had gone perfectly and his chatterbox sisters had provided him with a seemingly endless supply of dead batteries.

Dexter climbed to his feet, still coughing as the microwave beeped impatiently. Except for everything in the small laboratory around it being covered with rubble and some of the fine white powder now filling the air, the appliance was perfectly fine. He popped open the oven and pulled out the plastic unit containing Rex's cell phone battery. It was the only clean thing in the room and it held a full charge.

"It worked," he announced.

Four more people in the room with him were moving about, all of them coughing and as dirty and even more confused than Dexter.

"Is it supposed to do that?" rasped Rex, leaning on his knees as he tried to clear his lungs of dust.

"Seems like a bit too much cleanup to charge a battery, dude," Ben agreed, making sure Rex was alright.

Nigel pulled off his sunglasses to clean them. "Dexter, you might want to reconsider the viability of this particular invention."

"It never did _this_ before," muttered Dexter.

Mr. Green hit the control for the fans and gradually the air began to clear.

"I don't understand. What exploded?" Still holding the charger, Dexter looked around. The lab was perfectly intact, yet covered with dust and gravel and bits of sheet rock and debris and - was this dust actually _flour?_ He stared at his white-coated gloves, at a loss. "Computress, analysis. What just happened?"

"A power surge of unknown origin and composition engulfed the demo lab for a span of 3.7 seconds, resulting in a transplanted debris field and chromosomal resequencing."

"Chromo-what?" squawked Dexter, horrified. His experiment had nothing, nothing, _less than nothing_ to do with genetics and the only organic compound involved was plastic. Confounded, he turned around.

And screamed.

The door burst open and Sgt. Morton piled in, rifle at the ready and prepared for anything, it seemed, except this. There were a few things Navy SEAL training and experience as an executive officer just didn't cover and this was most definitely one of them. He slid to a stop next to his teenage boss and joined in the slack-jawed staring contest.

"Uh, sir, this isn't infectious, is it?" he asked a little nervously, finally mustering the strength to blink. He laid hold of Dexter's collar, prepared to bodily haul his employer out of here if necessary.

"What the - I don't believe this!" cried an indignant voice.

Kilroy Van Green, fire demon, head of DexCorp's research and development, and Dexter's favorite teacher, always so tall and poised and elegant, could now add willowy, wasp-waisted, and buxom to his - or rather, _her_ \- list of most appropriate adjectives. For a long moment Green looked down at stiletto heels, skin tight leggings, tight-laced corset, elbow-length gloves, and one hell of a lot more green skin than he - or rather, _she_ \- had ever displayed before. She tried to fold her arms across her chest and found the habitual gesture impaired by a rather ample bosom, and settled for resting her hands on her suddenly curvy hips. Wisps of smoke that smelled of brimstone rose up on all side and her one red eye glowed with anger.

"Dexter," said his tutor in the soft, high-pitched voice of a female fire demon, her horns curling in anger, "what have you _done?"_

 **OoOoOoOoOoOoO**

"You must have done something."

"Nothing! Nothing! I don't know why this happened. I don't even know what happened!" Dexter argued desperately for the umpteenth time, his panic unabated despite the fact that a good half hour had passed since the initial trauma of seeing his closest male friends converted into girl friends.

Used as he was to turning into aliens and dealing with all manners of odd species, Ben was definitely dealing with the situation the best - better even than Dexter, who hadn't been affected. After everything else he'd turned into and experienced in his life, ending up as a female version of himself just seemed inevitable for the Wielder of the Omnitrix. After cleaning up and one look at her reflection, Ben just shook her head, pushed her hair behind her ears, and sighed. Her calm acceptance of the switch was actually agitating her friends. As a girl she looked very much like a pert, brunette copy of her cousin with a pixie cut. Unlike Nigel, she didn't question why her jacket had changed to a corset, her skinny jeans to a mini skirt, why her high-tops now laced all the way to her knees, or where the fishnet stocking had come from.

Rex had been angry only up to the point where she caught sight of herself in the bathroom mirror, when fascination had replaced fury. Tall, slim, with dusky skin and short-cropped hair, her responses had ranged from "I can't go back to Providence like this!" to "I may not be happy, but man, I'm hot!" to "Hey, Nigel, can I try on your boots?"

Curled up in a corner of the lab, Nigel was simultaneously grateful her red sweater hadn't converted to a corset like her friends' shirts had and horrified that instead of shorts, she now wore a tutu, thigh-high stockings, and ankle rocket boots. And a bra. She was wearing a bra, not even a B.R.A., and worse still, she needed one for the exact reason bras had been designed. She was a girl, with all the equipment that accompanied the sex. Much as Nigel liked and respected girls, she did not want to be or dress like one. This was not acceptable, and she was in a state of absolute denial.

The KND operative abruptly pounced, tugging the tutu down over shapely thighs. "Dexter! Put us back!"

The young genius was frantic, his anxious voice even more high-pitched and heavily accented than normal. "Nigel, I didn't do this thing! The device I was demonstrating is incapable of initiating a resequencing of chromosomes. Microwaves don't do that sort of thing!"

"Then what did?" screamed Number One, shaking Dexter so hard that his teeth clamped together. Off to the side, Morton just stood by the door and let the KND vent since it was plain that he needed to. Chip would only intervene if Dexter was in actual peril.

"Dad's trying to figure that out right now!"

They all looked over to where Professor Utonium and Ms. Green were bent over an impressive collection of microscopes and computers and sciency things. Pages and pages of notes littered the table, and everyone who had or hadn't been affected had gladly surrendered samples of almost every fluid their bodies could produce. Utonium was having quite the difficult time focusing, especially since Kilroy growled and muttered every time her chest got in her way, which was constantly. As with his son, seeing one of his closest friends turned into a woman was rather disconcerting, especially since, to put it mildly, Roy was stacked.

Aware of the desperate eyes upon them, the two scientists looked up. Since Nigel looked about a second away from strangling Dexter, and before Morton had to intervene the Professor rose and said, "Dexter's right. His device didn't do this, Nigel."

Game to make the best of a weird situation, Rex turned where she stood outside the bathroom to admire her back in the mirror. "Any idea what did?"

"Not yet," admitted the Professor. "That energy that hit the lab doesn't seem to have an outside source. It only appeared in the one room, not anywhere else on campus."

"Computress didn't recognize the energy signature, either," said Green.

"But you can fix this, right?" begged Number One.

"We'll do everything we can to revert you back. First we need to figure out how and why it happened to begin with."

Coming from the foremost geneticist on the planet, this was not reassuring.

Ms. Green rose as well, almost turning her ankle in those stiletto heels. "What I'd like to know is how our clothing was converted to . . . this." She gestured at the corset and tights she's been poured into. Utonium hastily averted his eyes.

"I wonder if my aliens will be female now, too," said Ben, not helping at all. "If there are female versions, that is. I'm not too sure about some of them. Most of them." She's already tried to get the Omnitrix to fix them, but the device had not detected any genetic anomalies - they were perfectly normal for their assorted species and, apparently, genders. "Hey, Professor, how come Dexter's still a guy?" She glanced at her best friend. "You are, right?"

"What? Yes!" squawked the redhead, offended. He paused long enough to take stock of himself, just in case. "Yes, Benjamin, still a boy."

"Why's that?" asked Ben, opening a whole new can of worms.

"Good question," said Utonium, giving his ward an assessing look. "Dexter?"

"I don't know!" exclaimed Dexter, throwing his hands up in frustration.

Behind dark glasses, Number One glared. "Were you a boy an hour ago?"

"Nigel, I've always been a boy!" snapped the scientist, returning the glare.

Ben chimed in. "Except for that time in second gra-"

"Shut up, Miss Tennyson."

"Boys," admonished the Professor. He caught himself. "Girls. Whatever. We need to work the problem, not snip at one another."

"You're right, sir," said Number One, briskly snapping into command mode out of sheer desperation for some sort of handle on the situation. "We need to - _oh, my god, Lizzie! I have a date tonight!"_

She clapped her hands to her hairless head, as close to panic as any of them had ever seen the commander of Sector V. Everyone stopped, wide-eyed and sympathetic.

"Lizzie'll be cool with you being a girl, right?" ventured Ben, utterly failing to infuse her voice with any optimism. A garbled wail out of Nigel was answer enough.

"Crap," breathed Rex, likewise remembering. She pulled her cropped bolero jacket close and pouted. "Noah is coming with Six when he picks me up tonight." She looked in the mirror. "I'd really rather they didn't see me like this. Six won't care but what if Noah wants a date? I don't have anything to wear but this!" Even as she spoke, Rex considered the corset and bolero jacket she was wearing and silently concluded that it wasn't all that bad a variation on her t-shirt and jacket.

"Aaaaaand Kevin and Gwen are giving me a ride back to Bellwood after we all get together for pizza tonight," Ben announced, somehow slumping while strapped into a corset. "Just kill me now."

"This is a disaster!" gasped Nigel, once again tugging down that short tutu. She was on the brink of hyperventilating.

"Oh, turtledove!" sang a new, familiar, and unwelcome voice, producing groans from all and sundry. A puff of pink smoke appeared and suddenly Him materialized in the center of the room in all his tulle-and-satin glory. Here was someone that had no issue with short skirts, thigh-high boots, and stiletto heels. "You were supposed to . . . call me?" Him trailed off, his green and yellow eyes widening in surprise as he saw the advantages of x chromosomes at work.

"No, Nigel, this is a disaster," corrected the fire demon as her significant other was caught completely off guard by Green's change in gender and wardrobe. "Him . . ."

The Ultimate Evil looked Green up and down and up and down again, a smile of awe and salacious delight spreading across his angular face.

"Nice rack, Kilroy."

Utonium and Dexter each clapped a hand to his head in identical gestures of disgust. Kilroy tried and failed to cross her arms over her chest again, having to settle for planting her fists on her hips.

"I hate you," Ms. Green snapped in a thoroughly unconvincing tone.

 **OoOoOoOoOoOoO**

"I can't believe you said that to me in front of my boss and my student. And Chip!"

"Yes, you can, darling. I really did mean your horns."

"No you didn't."

"Fine, but they are very impressive."

"Shut up."

 **OoOoOoOoOoOoO**

On the far side of the laboratory, Dexter cautiously approached his adopted father. "Dad?"

At the soft voice, Utonium looked up from where he was puzzling over blood samples taken from Ben over the past few years. The Professor shook his head at the addled cells on parade before him. It seemed that nothing about that kid was normal.

"Yes, Dexter?"

Casting a furtive look at his gender-bent friends, Dexter quietly asked, "Why aren't I a girl now, too?"

"Disappointed?"

"No! More . . . confused."

"You're in good company."

"And a trifle concerned."

"Ditto."

"Is there something off about me that whatever affected them didn't affect me?"

At a loss, the Professor shrugged. "Maybe whatever happened doesn't affect humans."

Dexter frowned, and then his eyes flew wide. He knew perfectly well that Ben was an Anodite hybrid. Rex was an EVO. Green was a fire demon. But Number One . . . ? _"What?"_ he demanded in a tight whisper. "What the hell does that make Nigel, then?"

"Language, Dexter. And when I figure _that_ out, I'll tell you after I tell him."

Shocked into speechlessness, Dexter could only stare. The Professor let him stew, enjoying the silence for a little while before he suggested, "Why don't you try to track down where the flour and rubble came from, and how it got transported here?"

"Ja, good idea, Dad," he agreed faintly, glad to be told what to do as the day somehow managed to get weirder. Utonium watched him go, trying to figure out how to tell the roomful of girls he had no idea whatsoever what had happened to make them this way nor how to realign their sex with their birth certificates. Nigel's clenched jaw and intense stare as Dexter crossed the room was enough to make him delay that particular announcement.

"Please tell me you've made progress," Kilroy murmured in quiet desperation. She leaned close to look at the notes the Professor was scribbling. Catching sight of the multitude of question marks scattered across the pages, she let out a tiny groan. "I'm going to send Him to the moon if this doesn't get reversed soon."

"Nigel might be shipping Dexter off there too, only without a spacesuit."

"I don't think Dexter had anything to do with this, to be honest."

"Agreed. Even if he had the know-how, even he'd need more equipment than a microwave to pull off this."

"It's the clothes that have really got me confused. And why wasn't Dexter affected?"

"He was just over here asking me that. He's pretty worked up about it, but it may be a non-human thing. He had no idea about Nigel, either."

"So far as I can tell, Nigel doesn't know about Nigel."

"Well, right now I haven't got a bloody clue how any of this happened," he said under his breath. He gestured at the samples and notes. "This is all for show."

Green's red eye narrowed and she tried not to lose all control. "I'll get you more coffee," she said with deceptive calm. It was as much a threat as a promise, and Utonium knew he was going to be trapped here until they had answers.

A very tense half hour passed before Dexter exclaimed with absolute indignation, "This dust is flour. Wheat flour. And all this debris came from the dumpster behind Hangar II where they're ripping out the ceiling tiles that got ruined by a water leak. None of this makes any sense! _What is going on here?"_

Ben lifted her hands in confusion. "You tell us, dude."

 **OoOoOoOoOoOoO**

Him had relegated himself to a corner of the lab slightly removed from the shenanigans and very much removed from Chip Morton. He was thoroughly, completely enjoying every moment of the teen drama, especially the part where everyone wanted to throttle Dexter, not to mention having his boyfriend turned into a girlfriend for a spell. Unlike the mortals present, he had a very good sense of what had happened, but he wasn't about to say anything just yet.

He waited until he was sure she was close by to check on her handiwork before slipping between dimensions. Here, between one moment and the next, they could see and talk without anyone noticing. A woman stood in the lab, tossing up a golden apple and watching with an amused gleam in her eyes as Dexter vainly tried to defend himself from another attack by his friends. Dressed in flowing white, blonde, gap-toothed, brimming with mischief, Eris smiled to see the Ultimate Evil popping in to pay her a visit.

"Bored, are we?"

"A little."

"That was brilliant," he complimented. "I especially love what you did with Kilroy."

Her smile broadened. "I can always do an encore for holidays."

"I'll keep it in mind. Why didn't you change Dexter?"

"Listen, when you've been at this antagonizing business as long as I have you figure out that sometimes the best way to mess with them is not to mess with them."

"It's working to perfection."

"Besides, I couldn't think of anything sexy to do with a lab coat. Apple?" She held up a shining gold apple.

"No thanks. Is it permanent?"

"Naa. It'll just last until midnight. They'll switch back tomorrow."

"I'm so going to be seen out on the town with Kilroy tonight."

She tossed the apple up and snatched it out of the air. "Yeah, but meanwhile I think all of DexLabs should get to appreciate my handiwork, don't you?"

"You're thinking too small, Eris. Why not the whole army?"

"I like the way you think, Him." She gestured, and suddenly alarms blared from all sides. Moments later, Mandy's voice came over the speakers.

 _"Red alert! Fusion presence detected in Downtown. This is not a drill! Tennyson, Uno, Salazar, report to your stations immediately!"_

Screams of panic and denial erupted from every corner of the lab, and Eris, Goddess of Strife and Discord, laughed and exalted as her day was made.


	4. of a Future President

**. . . of a Future President**

 **OoOoOoOoOoOoO**

For Mageblood, who asked me to write Dexter showing the Professor his laboratory for the first time.

 **OoOoOoOoOoOoO**

"So, you really do have a nuclear reactor."

"I'm still surprised you don't."

"Townsville's regulatory board frowns on it."

"That's too bad. I hooked the whole house up to this five years ago. We haven't had a power bill since."

"Nice."

Dexter shrugged. "I needed an increase in my allowance."

Professor Utonium smiled, shaking his head as he stepped away from the compact power plant. Now that he knew Dexter better, he was past being dumbfounded by anything this child did. Secret entrance to a giant underground laboratory behind the bookcase in his bedroom? Check. Nuclear reactor in the basement? Check. Giant robots? Lasers? AI computer with a snarky sense of humor and a protective streak? Check, check, check.

"You built all of this?" Utonium confirmed, taking in the sleek and silvery design of the space and the specialized machines the functions of which he could only guess.

"I was compelled. Mom wouldn't let me use a blowtorch in my bedroom."

"I can't imagine her not wanting her four-year-old to play with open flames."

"I don't get it either. Come, I'll show you the Null-Void prototype."

It was evident that Dexter could barely contain himself as he escorted the Professor around the small kingdom he had carved out for himself. Utonium could relate – it had been a relief the whole summer to have a fellow scientist around the house, one who understood his humor and conversation. It took almost half an hour to reach the Null-Void – Dexter was constantly getting side-tracked by this invention or that. The Megabot prototype was worth a side-tour, seeing as how it was the reason they had met at all.

They were interrupted briefly when Buttercup – who with her sisters had been zooming around the space with abandon to rival DeeDee's – flew up and exclaimed,

"You have a wind tunnel!"

"Don't all fifth-graders?" Dexter countered.

She didn't even nibble at the bait. "Can we try it out?"

Dexter blinked, realizing her meaning. They wanted to fly against the force of the wind. He gestured. "Fine with me."

"Careful," warned the Professor, indulging his daughters.

"You got it, Daddy-o." She gave an uncharacteristic squeak, and as she joined her sisters they could hear her call, "They said yes! Crank 'er up, DeeDee!"

Dexter smiled, clearly pleased to have made the Powerpuffs happy, and returned to the Null-Void.

"Those are the earlier models," said Dexter, pointing to a row of progressively improved guns. The finished laser was sized somewhere between a large handgun and a rifle, with an oversized barrel and several controls built into the frame.

"May I?" asked Utonium, reaching for it.

Dexter waved him on. "Please."

As he lifted the gun, the Professor noticed two more lasers of completely different designs on a nearby workbench and paused. He recognized the crude gun Harold Smith had threatened them with by the electrical cord. The other was gold-plated and engraved and could only have belonged to Princess Morebucks.

"Dexter . . . "

Only slightly contrite, Dexter quickly said, "They weren't using them."

Deciding it wasn't his concern and wanting to avoid a headache, the Professor returned his attention to the stunning new technology he had agreed to finance. He was very aware of Dexter watching him, gauging his reaction. Like everything else about Dexter, the outside shell of the gun was deceptively simple, but the inner workings were devilishly complex.

"It's not as heavy as I thought it would be." He pointed it at the floor, looking down the sight.

"I anticipate it will be even lighter and more compact by the Mark IV or V stage and Professor, do you really have a hundred-thousand dollars lying about that you can just hand over like this?"

He smiled, feeling the balance and grip and marveling at how easy it was to handle as he answered. "Actually, I've got a lot more than that, so if the hundred thousand runs out, let me know. I just got a nice settlement from a slander and libel case against Providence. I can't think of anything I'd rather do with the money than show them up."

For a moment Dexter gaped at him, recognizing the name of the quasi-military organization tasked with controlling EVOs. Utonium caught the look and handed the Null-Void back. "I'll tell you all about it the next time we're together. It's better over ice cream. And this, young man, is remarkable. This whole place is remarkable. Almost as remarkable as you."

Very nearly glowing under such praise, Dexter carefully returned the Null-Void to its rack. He took a moment to fix his gloves and straighten his glasses, the Boy Genius equivalent of hugging himself and wriggling in excitement. Together they slowly walked deeper into the lab, toward the wind tunnel. They could hear Bubbles' squeals and shouts of encouragement from the other girls over the hum of machinery. Content with the world, the Professor enjoyed the sounds, the setting, and his companion, looking down at the eleven-year-old boy with glasses and lab coat and bright red hair crowned by a cowlick. Dexter walked with his hands clasped behind him, looking as smug and happy as Utonium had ever seen him. It was a complete change from the Dexter's crushing depression of the weekend past, and the Professor was relieved and reassured that his friend would be all right.

"So . . . now that I'm going to be president, what exactly am I the president of?"

"My company," said Dexter simply, then called, "Computress! Download a copy of the latest version of my business plan for the Professor."

"Right away, Dexter," the computer replied, her voice infused with so much enthusiasm that Dexter frowned in surprise.

"So, you've got a plan, you've got a product, you've got financing and employees – have you got a name?"

"Ehh," Dexter groused, which was answer enough.

"No name? I figured that would be the first thing you'd come up with."

"Everything I think up is too long. I need something short and snappy."

"Like you?"

"Shorter. Why don't you name it? You're good at that."

"Don't let Buttercup hear you say that. Name it after yourself."

"Oh, sure: Dexter's Laboratory, Inc."

"That's not so bad."

"Pfft. I can hear Mandark's screams already. Tell you what, name the company for me and I'll double your salary."

"Two whole bucks? Wow. How can I say no?"

"So, you've chosen to accept your assignment. Good luck, President Utonium."

He hummed thoughtfully for effect. "Well, if Dexter's Laboratory is too long, call it DexLabs."

"DexLabs?" he echoed, trying it out. He paused to mull it over. "DexLabs."

Pleased and full of himself, Utonium pointed in mock firmness. "You said you'd double my salary if I named it for you."

The entirety of their conversation caught up with Dexter and he sputtered, "Really? Did you just name my company with _a dad joke?"_

"Ah! Gotcha! I just named your company."

Dexter stared, slack-jawed. He clapped his palm to his head. "I can't believe I fell for it twice."

"In a row," the Professor pointed out cheerfully.

Unable to contain himself any longer, Dexter stepped over and wrapped Professor Utonium in a tight hug. Delighted beyond words, Dexter let out a small breath that grew and spread until he and the Professor were hugging and laughing out loud in the middle of the laboratory. They went on for so long that DeeDee and the Powerpuff Girls noticed and came to see.

"Dexter, what's so funny?" asked DeeDee, wanting in on the joke.

Still laughing, Dexter beamed at his sisters and said,

 _"_ _DexLabs."_


End file.
